


thrashing on the line (between desperate and divine)

by nishtabel



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Happy MerMay!, Human Sylvain, M/M, Shark Dimitri, Suicidal Thoughts, graphic depictions of death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24357286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nishtabel/pseuds/nishtabel
Summary: While visiting his hometown for work, Sylvain contemplates the worth of his life. Dimitri watches, silent and intrigued, from the ocean—until he can't.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 20
Kudos: 71





	thrashing on the line (between desperate and divine)

**Author's Note:**

> please please please mind the tags on this one! **major CW for suicidal ideation, references to miklan's death, and mentions of drug and alcohol abuse.** if that's not your cup of tea, i suggest you skip this one!

Sylvain hadn’t moved to Florida to wander the beaches, but he finds himself wandering all the same. His little shack on the beach—a bungalow, a little VRBO house he’s _supposed_ to be remodeling—sits empty on the shore, weather-beaten and sunbleached. He’s been here for almost a month, and he’s done little more than punch a hole through the wall separating the kitchen and living room. It’s okay, though—it’s supposed to be open concept, anyway.

Shortly after seven p.m., he finds himself on the sandbars just outside his home. (Not his home—his _client’s_ home. Maybe if he were less of an artistic genius, they’d be more impatient. As it stands, he has all the time in the world, and thus, very little motivation.) The tide is receding, foamy and gentle in the distance, and, sure, maybe he should have worn swim trunks, but even the old washer in the kitchen can handle some sand, sweat and salt.

He wades into the ocean.

It’s peaceful, like this: the tide pulls at him, soft and coaxing, a tug around his waist that promises to be gentle, kind. He’d thought this sight was beautiful, once; he’d spent hours, days, chasing after Miklan at sunset, watching him pick at sand fleas and other slithering, chittering creatures. Miklan had always done his best to scare him off—until, of course, he’d turned ten, and then Sylvain had been a _man_ , and maybe Miklan could use the help. Would Sylvain like that, hm?

Sylvain shivers against the warm soothing of the tide. The cloying aftertaste of his beer sits heavy in his mouth. Salt and grime grow thick in his nose.

The waves lap up to his chest, ribbing, rhythmic. He sways with them. How had he ever grown to hate this feeling? He curls his toes into the sand, an anchor he knows won’t stand against the cool current that warps around his ankles. The sea could take him now, just like this—and for a moment, Sylvain lets himself admit it: he’d let it happen.

With a deep, stuttering breath, he closes his eyes. He lets himself float, quietly, softly. Thoughts begin to rise behind his eyelids, bloated and rotten from years ignored. They’d find his body within days, maybe a week. Even down the road, the smell would grow unbearable. When he was younger, he’d thought he might let the ocean carry him away—but Miklan’s body had returned to shore like all the others, ghastly blue and reeking of fish. The ocean didn’t discriminate, Sylvain had learned: no matter how good, how evil, it took no prisoners.

He won’t give in tonight, he knows. As much as he hates himself—hates his _birthright_ , the flowery symbolism of his family’s crest—there is a part of him that shrinks at the idea of being found in such a hideous, awful way. What would they say, after his _sweet, chocolate_ eyes have been plucked from his skull by seagulls? His _perfect, windswept_ hair bleached by the sun? Would they still count his freckles as his flesh sloughed from his bones? Run a delicate hand up his arm as it swelled to bursting? Would they still look at him and see _money, fame_?

 _Sylvain Jose Gautier_ , the headline would read, _of Gautier Industries, found dead in Florida Keys. Another tragic soul gone too soon._ Or would they suspect foul play? An accident? He amends: _—found dead of accidental drug overdose_. That’s how they all go, isn’t it? It wouldn’t matter, anyway; his father would never allow his autopsy to be released to the public. They could speculate and gossip, but they’d never know the truth: _Sylvain Jose Gautier, drowned by the ghost of his dead brother_.

A wave slaps his cheek, flooding into his mouth as his eyes snap open. The sun has long set, only a glimmer of light peeking above the horizon. The water rocks him gently, a soft slithering against his legs and feet. He’d be a fool to say it called to him, but—it does have a certain rhythm, a sort of lullaby. It envelops him in dreadful, tempting promise.

He steps back. There’s a flicker of movement to his left, a ripple and a wave. It’s big enough to catch his attention, but small enough to dismiss. The smaller fish are easy pickings this late in the evening, and he’s learned not to disturb a gar while it hunts. He’ll stay still, calm, a subtle shifting of feet as he wades his way slowly back to shore.

The current wraps cold around his ankles, a living thing, and he knows well enough to step sideways, step around it. For a moment, it works; he moves parallel to the shore, a steady drudge until his hips almost break water. He’s soaked through, shoulders heavy, and he’s clumsy enough—stupid enough—to think that when the current grabs his legs again, he’s close enough to land.

The ocean seems intent to prove him wrong.

When the current sweeps his feet from beneath him, Sylvain doesn’t go under. He bobs and he twists, dread settling laden in his chest, but he stays afloat, head blessedly above water. The current carries him away from shore, because that’s what it _does_ —it will carry him out between the sand bars, a rush of foam and barreling water. As long as he can stay above water—and he will, he _will_ , cannot be caught a week from now as Laura Palmer—he’ll swim back to shore once the rip current has passed.

What Sylvain’s brain so easily forgets is that rip currents are disorienting, dangerously quick and winding in their flow: he blinks and chokes through a mouthful of seawater, halfway onto his back and facing opposite the shore. The water is colder, deeper, darker—panic seizes him for a single, morbid moment when his feet kick below him and find nothing but open water. Darkness slithers through the cracks in his knowledge, treacherous whispers that sound very much like _death darkness rotting stinking swollen reaching miklan miklan miklan miklan miklan miklan—_

He gasps and he shudders, kicking physically against the thought of Miklan’s waterlogged hands around his ankles. He can feel it, can feel _them_ , uncut fingernails rasping against his crawling flesh. He can’t be far from shore—rip currents never go very far, but—

Sylvain spins and blinks and forces himself to think against the thudding in his chest, the deep, instinctual knowledge that Miklan is waiting for him, hunting him, growing closer with each frantic kick of his feet. He feels another _thing_ slither past his leg, slick and foul and very, very fast. His eyes are stinging with salt, mouth burning with it, and he sees the gentle swell of the sandbanks just there, _there_ —

His feet grow cold, toes curling against the dangerous beckoning of another current. It’s dark now, the sun set behind him, and he can see the moon’s reflection breaking on the surface of the water. It’s delicate, thin, a waning crescent; it curls as little more than a single thread of silver yarn over the waves. He has nothing but the light of the bungalow to swim by, yawning yellow in the distance.

Sylvain begins to swim, clumsy and cold. His arms fight against the saltwater scratch of his clothes, sagging and heavy with grime. He shouldn’t be having so much trouble—he grew up on the beach, goddamn it—but he’s got six-seven-eight beers in his system on very little food, and the push and pull of the tides is beginning to churn in his belly. He sets his shoulders and swims diagonally toward the shore, skin crawling with each errant slip of something _alive alive alive_ past his ankles, between his legs. The water is warm at his chest and cold at his feet, and he can feel the abyss swirling open beneath him.

He tries to ride the waves as best he can, kicking up as they crest, but they grow violent as he moves closer to shore. One slaps him against his ear, forcing seawater into his mouth and nose; the next threatens to take him under. He treads water, feet kicking desperately for some kind of purchase, any sign that he’s close than he was; he coughs and splutters and blinks rapidly against the salt that crusts his lashes, burns his throat. There’s a roaring in his left ear, like a shell held against it, the thundering heartbeat of the ocean. He feels numb, chilled, and all the while his clothes scratch and tug against him.

Sylvain doesn’t hear the next wave coming. It crests just behind him, a living thing, and when it hits him, it crashes over his head. He flails and splutters, forced underwater and blinking rapidly as the ocean spins him. Everything is so dark, so _deep_ —he reaches with his hands for open air and finds only water.

He has to be closer to shore. He must be, if the wave that took him under was rolling in. He kicks wildly, forcing himself upwards—up, he has to be facing up, his feet and legs are still colder—and he has a moment of victory when his face breaks the surface of the water. He gasps, a deep, wet breath, before the next wave crashes over him. It’s roiling, _angry_ , and he goes down as quickly as he came up. 

This time, the current below his feet catches him. It grabs his ankles, wet and cold, and pulls him counter to the tide—out and out and out, all blackness and dread. Sylvain blinks against the swiftness of the water, chilled through his weighted clothes, and realizes that he’s going to die.

He thinks: if he’s far enough to sea when the water takes him, perhaps they won’t find his body. Maybe the water will pull him so far down, hold him so deep within its cavernous maws, that he won’t resurface. Maybe this is how he escapes: into the depths of the Florida ocean, drunk and alone and _fucking_ stupid.

He kicks. He kicks, and he howls, and he rages against the dying of the light, and when he finally breaks the surface—finally, _finally_ , in water that is warmer, softer, unsettlingly calm—he screams. He bobs in the middle of the ocean, hopeless and lost, and fights against the lead that threatens to settle in his limbs. If there was just _something_ —

He squints against the dryness of his eyes, vision blurry and pale. He can’t trust his eyes, but he can’t trust his body, either; he needs to get to some kind of land. Any kind of land. He won’t think about the tide rolling in, how any rocks or sandbars or little strips of land will be covered within the hour. He will get to land, _somehow_ , and—

There’s a shadow in the water.

There’s a shadow in the water, and it’s moving. It’s slow, at first: it shimmers with the beating of the waves, a gentle writhing that circles in on itself and lingers just below the surface. Sylvain can’t see it, not really, but he knows it’s getting closer, and he knows it can’t be _friendly_ , because there’s no head, no body, no— _nothing_ , just a shadow mass that whispers towards his exhausted, aching body.

It doesn’t touch him, not even when it begins to float—swim?—around his legs. Sylvain feels the rippling of the current against his hips, his waist, the frantic bobbing of his chest. It feels—foreign, _contrived_ , somehow separate from the ocean’s consciousness. He gasps and he shivers, eyes burning with the effort it takes to keep them open against the saltwater that pours from his sodden hair. He’s being taunted, he knows it; he doesn’t dare give the creature a chase.

The shadow moves closer still, wrapping so tight around him that Sylvain can almost feel it. _Warm_ , almost: soft and silken where it brushes his stomach, a rasping fin against his calf. Not a gar, then, or a barracuda. It’s big, and it’s smart, and—

Hands curl sharp around his ankles, and with a final squeeze, they pull him under.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you all for reading! this is going to be a silly little side project for me in between all of my other longfic, but i hope you'll enjoy all the same! comments are always appreciated, too. :)
> 
> you can find me over on twitter [@nishtabel](https://twitter.com/nishtabel).


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